The Infrequent Five: Fruit Edition (Part 2 of 2)

Guava

Instead of starting your day off with a hot cup of java, why not liven things up a bit with a big bowl of guava?

Granted, guava won’t give you the energy jolt coffee provides, but it will give your skin the energy it needs to maintain its radiant glow.  That’s because guava is positively packed with vitamin C, and a recent study of 4,000 women found that women who ate foods that were high in vitamin C tended to have fewer wrinkles than women who rarely consumed vitamin C rich foods.

When you purchase guava, look for pieces that are more yellow in color than they are green (the greener they are, the less ripe they are).  But if the main reason why you’re getting guava is for its richness in vitamin C content, choose a less ripened guava, as the vitamin C content declines the riper they are.

Guava is typically consumed as-is by scooping out the inside then chopping it into pieces like you would a cantaloupe or honeydew melon.  Besides being added to fruit salads, guava is often used to make jelly, as the guava contains a large amount of pectin (a key ingredient for jelly making).

Asian Pears

If you’re native to the Far East or the American Northwest, you’re no doubt very familiar with the Asian pear.  But for everyone else, like the name implies, the Asian pear is a foreign fruit.

What this foreign fruit is known for, though, is its richness in fiber—10 grams of fiber per pear, in fact.  Fiber is good for a host of health functions, but it’s especially good for people battling high cholesterol.  A high fiber diet has been shown in test after test to help lower cholesterol levels.  And by eating one Asian pear per day, you’re 40 percent of the way to your daily recommended fiber intake.

Unlike most fruit, the Asian pear isn’t particularly sweet.  Tending more toward tart than sweet, they make a great accompaniment to savory dishes that call for stir-fry proteins like chicken and stir-fry vegetables like watercress and Vidalia onions.

Prepare Asian pears as you would a regular pear, peeling the skin off if you’d like or using the entire pear.  You’re better off using the whole thing if you want a truly fiber-packed pear.

Papaya

When you think of what foods to fuel your muscles after a hard-fought workout, fruit don’t spring to mind.  But believe it or not, papayas are one of the few fruits that give muscles the nutrients they need for recovery.

Not only do they contain about three grams of protein, but papayas also contain a muscle-promoting enzyme called papain.  Papain helps to break down amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein.

In searching for ripe papaya, look for yellow papayas.  Papayas take a long time to ripen, so the yellower they are, the sweeter they are (if the only ones available are green, you can speed up the ripening process by storing them in a brown paper bag with a banana.  Bananas produce a ripening gas called ethylene).

As with most fruits, papayas can be eaten as-is—making sure to discard its skin on the outside and its inedible seeds on the inside—or you can add them to a fruit smoothie, which will give it a nice tropical flare.

Part: 1 | 2

Sources
prevention.com
Green, Aliza. “Field Guide to Produce.” 2004. Quirk Books: Philadelphia.